Grand Massive
4

Grand Massive from Bavaria in Germany comes up with their fourth release, their third album. It is following the tradition of their earlier releases and is called 4, the cover is rather appealing. They have been working with Christoph von Freydorf (Emil Bulls) for three years in creating this album that is claimed to introduce new elements and inspirations to the music. One example is that they have their fastest song so far on this album, you will still recognise their stoner rock/metal style with fat riffs and powerful choruses.

A fan will find the style familiar but with a few new flavours like a slightly more dynamic style and a bigger variation in terms of what kind of songs that are found on the album. The vocalist is a decent stoner vocalist, and the production is very good with a nice dynamic feel to it. The playing time is a bit long though, they could do away with one or two of the tracks as 50 minutes is too much Grand Massive, at least too much 4.

In some ways it is good step forward from the predecessor, an evolved sound with more interesting elements and some really good songs. The problem is that the playing time is near eternal and several songs are quite dull, like they have been overworked during the three years they been working on the album endlessly watering down the songs into lifeless husks, there are three or four such songs that are really dreary. There are some great ones as well, like The Collector, a song I really like. The Path that comes after the Collector is also really strong, and I think Never Gone that pays tribute to some lost rock vocalists is a fine track as well. This leads to a somewhat ambivalent impression of this album; on the one hand it is great but on the other hand it is really poor. In the end I think it settles somewhere in the middle, the great and the poor kind of equals each other out and we end up with a decent album.

I like how they move forward from the previous album, the songs aren’t always successful but the album as a whole is still good and feels pretty worthwhile. Fans of the band will like it and I think it may have a relatively wide appeal with the fans of the stoner rock/metal genre and perhaps more than those. It is one of those albums where it would be appealing to keep a few tracks and remove the rest, it has some really enjoyable features and it might be worth checking it out.

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